Unlikely scenarios for murder

Tuesday

Aug 20, 2013 at 6:00 AM

The main thing I have learned about conspiracy theories is that conspiracy theorists believe because it is more comforting. The truth is that the world is actually chaotic. The truth is far more frightening. Nobody is in control. The world is rudderless," said the writer Alan Moore.

I wish I'd placed a good bet on the fact that last week (and this) the old "Princess Diana was murdered" theories would begin to pop up, just before the 16th anniversary of her death.

Please! Much like that other neurotic blonde who died in August, Miss Marilyn Monroe, there wasn't a reason on earth for anybody to murder either one of these women, who were often messes in beaded dresses, but a danger to nobody except perhaps themselves.

I have long ago concluded that there certainly was a conspiracy surrounding the death of President John F. Kennedy and probably his brother Robert as well. And we might as well throw in the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King while we're at it.

But Diana, or Monroe? This is rather sad. After 50 years gone there aren't very many left to be hurt by anything said about Marilyn. But Diana's two sons, William and Harry, have to suffer through this garbage every summer.

Had Diana continued in her helter-skelter way of life — one week a saint, gingerly walking near land mines, the next a shapely playgirl in a leopard skin bathing suit, cavorting with the likes of the immature Dodi Fayed, nobody would have needed to murder her. As Macbeth murdered sleep, Diana would have killed her reputation, much to the pleasure of the royal family.

They were just waiting for her to capsize the yacht, so to speak.

As for Monroe, there's an even more unlikely scenario for murder. She wasn't a "danger" to anybody because in 1962 she couldn't have been. Nobody would have exposed her relations — such as they were, or she thought they were — with the Kennedy men. She might have been distraught at times, but having already once been confined to a mental hospital, it would have been easy to place her in another. No need to go the extra, murderous mile.

A lot of this has to do with the month itself — so hot and sticky and ripe for a good story.